Saturday, November 26, 2011

Lilly Fitzgerald

Master goldsmith
Lilly Fitzgerald is based in Spencer, Massachusetts. Her award-winning
work includes one-of-a-kind pins, necklaces, boxes, earrings, bracelets and
rings. Her work is sold exclusively at juried shows and private viewings
in Boston, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Though
essentially self-taught, Lilly Fitzgerald studied fine art and painting at
museum schools in Montreal and Worcester, Massachusetts. “At heart I’m a
frustrated painter and sculptor,” says Fitzgerald. Since 1976 she has
lived and worked in an eighteenth century farmhouse outside of Boston.
Her studio, a renovated barn, is filled with books and objects from her travels
throughout Asia, Europe and the United States that inspire her unique designs.

Working with
twenty-two karat gold, the majority of Fitzgerald’s pieces are hand
fabricated. The focus of her designs is the finest of gems and minerals
that she sources from around the world. Lilly often incorporates vintage
materials and rare artifacts resurrected from prior lives to create an
extraordinary amalgam of past and present.

Favoring
opals, pearls, moonstones, lapis, tourmaline, and sapphires, she creates
classical pieces of striking beauty. Described as luminous and elegant,
Fitzgerald’s work crosses over from decorative to fine art. “I make no
distinction between craft and art with respect to work like hers,” notes
Jonathan Fairbanks, former curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Whether she
is designing earrings depicting a gold swan perched on a large South Sea pearl
(a signature piece), or transforming a butterfly wing into a twenty-two karat
gold pendant, Fitzgerald creates jewelry of exceptional structural complexity
and distinction.

Fitzgerald
has received numerous awards and honors from the American Craft Exposition, The
Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Boston Society for Arts & Crafts, among
others. Her work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston and private collections throughout the United States.